As i look outside, i see vast darkness with itinerant flashes of lightning. Then, the dark pages of the bridge surface from the void. I hear the thrum of rain sheeting on my window pane. Your images, in stark contrast, are silent. But, listen carefully - and they speak. They speak the language of color and form: with your lambent hues, you traverse the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the great circle of the heavens. Presently, i have forgotten about the storm outside for i have discovered another - it is you, dearest.

If you ever tasted a marvelous candy in your childhood, and that flavor resurfaced half a lifetime later in a nebulous, yet strangely powerful way - you will understand what sugary treat you have left for those with childlike minds. Perhaps, it is simpler to say, "thank you." Though, many times, simplicity is not enough, for to pierce the soul is never a simple matter.

i hear distant thunder and i am blinded by its progeny. But, i am mistaken: it is your images that blind me. She touches her shaded lips, lowers her downy eyes and thinks of the four seasons. And multiplied by three months, she invokes the number twelve. Her work is done ... work is done ... done. It is now a selfless puff of dove-gray smoke.

now, you can think anything that that might mean. I don't usually comment on your pics when they are alone without your poetry,as I cannot add anything intelligent usually but these wonderful images are extremely erotic and beautiful. I do not want to know what the ivy stands for, but the images are dream like and hypnotic, as if the melancholy inside has finally dared to shed the outer visage. i remember these lines from Octavio Paz, though they may not seem relevant:

I am swimming in this!Thank you for your thoughtful comments! They were intense, then I read the foolishness of things blog and began to wonder what Philosopher is this Roxanna? and now I see it is partnering your images with his writing. I need a course in philosophy to keep up! your images speak volumes to me however, have a serendipitous week.Di

I am late leaving a comment ... I almost feared that you would move on to a new post before I was able to find the breath you had taken from me and to speak ... but I wish you could know how much time I have spent in coming back to this, lost with her, and how indelibly present she has remained when I am away. All these images (I can’t possibly choose) are intensely beautiful in a way that almost makes “beautiful” irrelevant. Transported here, I suddenly realize that this dream has been the real world all along, and that I have missed it so, these many years....

This ivy twining around her ... I think of all those stories of nymphs translated into plants (and ivy is sacred to Dionysus!), the intoxicating frenzy and price they pay for their beauty. And transformation plays through this series --- but differently than in the old myths. Whatever god might be chasing her remains unseen, but rather than struggling, she dances through the translation of herself into her selves (these many versions of the same infinitely-enticing dark-haired nymph with the soft light playing this delicate note on her marble-sheened skin). This moment is the real change, the entry into the real world --- beauty and sensuality move (thrive, pulse) at their wildest, Dionysian best when her struggle with the multiple selves becomes this dance, this inevitability, this embrace....

It is magnificent. Thank you for creating this space, over and over....

bonjour chère magnifique tellement gentille Roxana.Thankyou for appreciating my comments, in turn I think of the bridge as a temple of the soul.

ah Roxana these images truly do peirce the heart with light.This is the goddess of light and love the all encompassing eros.She is the vine and we are the branches that climb her wall of flesh that disolves into a veil of ecstatic sensuousness.

I don't take religion literally but symbolically as a meditation and in this magnificent series the ecstasy of light seems to transcend all symbolism to arrive at the heart of creation once more. Another prayer even for the atheist.

In the last photograph my vision is that the self dissolves into the body of life and there is no longer the distinction between the material and spiritual world, the boundary between the two is fluid.

and this series of photos would make a wonderful book on the creation of light, truly she is a goddess is this model you? well anyway she is you in your heart and soul.....

Well that is my story for today chère Roxana and thankyou for this wonderful experience of sharing this with you

something has changed yet I can't grasp what...will keep staring and maybe the dot will blink back at me...meanwhile have a great hug ;), humblest regards and take a round on my "merry go round"...or not...

... nespus de frumos ... and everything hides in the “nespus,” does it not?, in the void heart of the encounter (void, yes, though in the Japanese fashion, creative, alive with contradictions, the gap between neurons --- but still void, expression sundered -- gerissen, a word that I know you love -- from intent, nespus, indicible…) ... certainly what I wrote before was not what I wanted to say, only a shadow ... I wanted to say the live moment of opening the page to these images, and the soul’s fine delight in being taken by them, raptured into them, into color and line and light and face and hands and veil and movement ... the gasp of pleasure and the held breath which are a gesture of the soul expanding into new knowledge of the possibilities of being ... I wanted to say the "yes" that comes unwilled from the soul facing such beauty and is the most true response, prior to words or thought or analysis (and I am less and less impressed with, or interested in, the analysis of beautiful things as the years go by...)

... but I think you know :-) ... the comments are not what I wanted to say, they are markers that stand here in place of the impossible nespus, my being’s instant, wordless assent to this miracle ... but, yes, I think you know, is this not the meaning of the Bridge?

The seventh photo in this series speaks to me, whispers to me, draws me in. I feel as if I have swum in that mystery. I don't know why, but for me it has a Pre-Raphaelite feeling, particularly Rossetti's work, eroticized.

i have to confess, you have overwhelmed me with your so intense responses to my ivy selves, dear all - i wouldn't know how to answer, except to accept your gifts, gratefully, in silence.

still, a question has come back in your comments, so i will reveal (i know, and thus destroy :-) the "secret" behind these pictures, there is none in fact, but only:1. my love for ivy, ever since i am little, one can find here and there, in some old streets, lonely houses, standing there forgotten, completely covered with ivy, only the windows are bare, an illusory promise of the revelation of a mystery, a glimpse of a life. and i have always longed to live in one of these ivy castles, as my child imagination had painted them in my daydreams.2. my fascination with Rossetti and Mucha's women (yes, Rossetti too, i had oscillated between "Pre-Raphaelite" and "art-nouveau" in the title, they share some elements, don't they?).3. my obsession with the idea of metamorphoses, especially the in-between stage, the threshold between different worlds (as in Ovid's).4. necessary tools for such dreams: a tripod and a remote to activate the camera, if i am a priestess, as someone called me here, then it must mean that the gods are pleased with my offerings because they alone decided about light and time, the (missed or not) heartbeat of the moment. i simply danced with my ivy and pressed the remote button from time to time. if there is magic here, it belongs entirely to Photography itself.